VT scores are mixed in national health survey

Laboratory testing of water, before and after municipal treatment, has come under increased scrutiny in the wake of Flint, Michigan's failure to alert customers to the presence of lead.(Photo: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS FILE)Buy Photo

Vermont’s preparedness for public health emergencies exceeds the national average this year, but has slipped slightly in two key areas, according to the National Health Security Preparedness Index released Monday.

For 2015, the Green Mountain State scored 7.3 on a 10-point scale on a survey created four years ago by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the release states.

The country as a whole scored 6.7 out of a 10-point scale in the latest assessment of 134 aspects of health preparedness, including vaccination rates, access to trauma centers and wireless 911 service, emergency and hazard training and food inspection.

Vermont charted performance declines in two of six major categories: its ability to mobilize resources during a health incident (8.8 points, down from 8.9 in 2013); and prevention of health impacts due to environmental or occupational hazards (6.3 points, down from 6.5 in 2013).

“We’ve improved incrementally in each of the subsequent years through practice and hard work,” he continued. “We do dozens of exercises each year.”

This summer, the department will conduct an inter-agency, week-long drill over how best to distribute medication to the public in an emergency.

What sort of emergency?

“We don’t actually know,” Bell said. “That’s part of the test.”

Independent sources will likely convey results of this and other drills to the National Health Security Preparedness Index survey, which is administered by the University of Kentucky in Lexington and is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Bell added.

Generally speaking, the country’s preparedness “is a glass that is two-thirds full,” Glen Mays, a professor of health policy at the university and the survey’s chief investigator, told the Burlington Free Press on Monday.

The survey has in the past three years refined its methods of collecting and analyzing data from government, community and private sources — and adjusts its scores from previous years to align with current measurements, Mays said.